Troubadour - Etymology of Name

Etymology of Name

The name "troubadour" and its cognates in other languages—trov(i)èro and then trovatore in Italian, trovador in Spanish, trobador in Catalan—are of disputed origin.

The oldest mention of the word "troubadour" as trobadors is found in a 12th century Occitan text by Peire d'Alvernhe.

The English word "troubadour" comes by way of French troubadour. The French word troubadour was first recorded in 1575 in an historical context to mean “langue d'oc poet at the court in the 12th and 13th century” (Jean de Nostre Dame, Vies des anciens poetes provençaux, p. 14 in Gdf. Compl.).

The French word is borrowed itself from the Occitan word trobador. It is the oblique case of the nominative trobaire “composer”, related to trobar “to compose, to discuss, to invent” cognative with Old French trover “to compose something in verses” (Wace, Brut, editions I. Arnold, 3342) “to invent, to create” (E. Deschamps, Poésies morales et historiques, 261 in T.-L.) > modern French trouver “to find”, first mentioned as trover with the close signification "to meet, to discover" in the 10th and 11th century, before the other one. They may both come from the hypothetical Late Latin *tropāre “to compose, to invent a poem” by regular phonetic change. This recreated form is deduced from the Latin root tropus, meaning a trope and the various meanings of the Old French and Old Occitan related words. In turn, the Latin word derives ultimately from Greek τρόπος (tropos), meaning "turn, manner". Both Occitan and Old French forms are perfectly parallel to each other, that is to say : the subject case of Old Occitan trobaire corresponds to Old French trovere (> Modern French trouvère) and the oblique case Old Occitan trobador (> troubadour) to Old French troveor, troveeur. Both evolved regularly and independently from Late Latin *tropator, *tropatoris. Intervocal Latin shifted regularly to in Occitan (cf. Latin sapere > Occitan saber “to know”) and to in French (cf. Latin sapere > savoir). The Latin suffix -ātor, -atōris explains the Occitan and French suffixes, according to its declension and accentuation : Gallo-Romance > French trouvère / Occitan trobaire (subject case) and > Old French troveor, troveeur « trouveur » / Occitan trobador « troubadour » (oblique case) (see also > OF peschiere / Occitan pescaire and > OF pescheeur, F pêcheur / Occitan pescador).

There is an alternative theory to explain the meaning of trobar as “to compose, to discuss, to invent”. It has the support of some historians, specialists of literature and musicologists to justify of the troubadours' origins in Arabic Andalusian musical practices. According to them, the Arabic word tʕaraba “song” (from the trilateral root Tʕ-R-B “provoke emotion, excitement, agitation; make music, entertain by singing”) could partly be the etymon of the verb trobar. Another Arabic root had already been proposed before : Dʕ-R-B “strike, touch”, by extension “play a musical instrument”. They entertain the possibility that the nearly homophonous Dʕ-R-B root may have contributed to the sense of the newly-coined Romance verb trobar.

Some proponents of this theory argue, only on cultural grounds, that both etymologies may well be correct, and that there may have been a conscious poetic exploitation of the phonological coincidence between trobar and the triliteral Arabic root TRB when sacred Sufi Islamic musical forms with a love theme first spread from Al-Andalus to southern France. It has also been pointed out that the concepts of "finding", "music", "love", and "ardour"—the precise semantic field attached to the word troubadour—are allied in Arabic under a single root (WJD) that plays a major role in Sufic discussions of music, and that the word troubadour may in part reflect this. Nevertheless, the linguistic facts do not support an hypothetical theory : the word trover is mentioned in French as soon as the 10th century before trobar in Occitan (see above) and the word trovere > trouvère appears almost simultaneously in French as trobador in Occitan (see above).